A Better Nation

Better Nation – you are struggling to make much sense here or are you just upset that the Daily Record is giving a platform to a non Labour politician in Joan MacAlpine?

May I ask which Labour are you talking about when you refer to the fact Labour is unchanged?

The Labour of Maxton, Hardy and John MacLean which is the Labour I was brought up on?

The Labour of 1945 whose implementation of clearly socialist mores of equal access were the inspiration for many other European countries post the 1945 war.

Harold Wilson’s Labour with its distinct social democratic policies?

Tony Blair’s neo-liberal Labour of the centre right which is the current incarnation on public view?

Maybe you mean the disaster area that is Labour’s Scottish region which means a Labour of endless negativity, sniping, shooting themselves in the foot, in fighting, back stabbing, micro-management, bullying, mysoginy and lies – all that before we even know what Labour sees as Scotland’s future except ‘jam tomorrow’ and constituency parties which are increasingly turning against London control of all aspects of selection procedures – all reflected in a Caird Hall two thirds empty for Milliband’s speech that even the BBC could not edit away.

I return to the substantive point I made – if you are reduced to arguing about the metaphor rather than the content, this can only mean you have difficulty countering the argument.

The PC ‘outrage’ is simply hubris to deflect from the political reality you are facing – Labour has no policies to effectively argue against the pro-independence position except the too wee, too stupid, too small narrative of Scotland that failed in 2007 and even more spectacularly in 2011.

The pro-independence movement has grown beyond ‘Wee Eck’ worship and ‘Braveheart’.

It is not tied to any political party except in using the SNP as the means to its end. The movement is well informed, litterate and understands clear why it wishes Scotland to withdraw from the Treaty of Union, it acknowledges the risks involved but believes the benefits are much, much greater; based on observation and research of other similar sized countries who are or have recently become independent.

It is ironic the pro-Union side are now where the pro-independence argument was in 2007 – emotive, lacking direction, calling on ‘Braveheart’ imagery, talking of ‘fighting’ and all enmeshed in a bubble of fear while projecting their fears onto their Scottish bogeyman – Wee Eck.

Westminster’s response to the declared wish for a new UK Union of a confederal nature by (in poll after poll) 65-70% of Scots is to try and legislate to ensure it can never happen through the increasing dog’s breakfast that is the Scotland Act Ammendment Bill a bill originally cooked up by Brown and Wendy Alexander to ‘kill the SNP and the increasing support for independence – stone dead’. In the same way the 1998 Scotland Act was supposed to ‘kill the SNP stone dead’ along with the Holyrood electoral system which was designed to ensure the SNP could never get an overall majority.

The pro-Union side appears to have no understanding of the dynamic under pinning their serial failure to kill the SNP stone dead. In the latest poll 71% of Scots stated their first preference is for a confederal UK Union to which Westminster’s answer remains the same as in 1997 – maybees aye, maybees naw and only if you vote against independence.

I would suggest the question is now becoming about the sort of Scotland you wish for your children and grandchildren where a vote ‘yes’ retains the Scottish social democratic ethos, while a vote ‘no’ drags Scotland down into the neo-liberal privatisation of public services which is increasingly the norm in England.